Gladly Would I Teach

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via www.missoulian.com

What a sad story that explains the need to teach kids to accept and work with each other.

Michelle Obama: Teachers Are Key to a Successful Economy – US News and World Report

"Today, we need a new generation of leaders to take their place in our nation's schools. We need passionate, talented, committed men and women to step up and devote themselves to preparing our students to succeed in this new century."

Education Week: Growing Up Scripted

This is an interesting essay about how little freedom today's students have because of school, activities, homework, etc. Doyle intimates that such heavy regulation of students leads to psychological problems, alcohol abuse, etc. Whereas Doyle makes many interesting points, I'm not sure that my students see themselves as having little individual freedom. I plan to use this essay for my students' blog topic of the week and ask them to tell whether or not they agree or disagree with Doyle's claims.

I was skimming my Facebook newsfeed last night and found a conscientious parent who was worried because she had just found out that her fourth-grade son
had homework, and she didn’t know anything about the assignment. A few minutes
after her post, one of her friends posted a website link where she could find
the homework assignment that her son had forgotten.

My mother never would have done that.  She was always helpful and supportive, but in
my childhood home, my homework was considered my homework, not my mother’s. She
frequently answered a question or showed me how to complete a problem, but then
she would push the paper back in front of me, pat me on the back, and say, “Okay,
now you finish it.” And, I would.

Mrs. Harris, my fourth-grade teacher, was the scariest
teacher my tiny ten-year-old soul had ever encountered. I can still see her
standing in front of the classroom and scowling, always scowling, scowling in
that know-it-all teacher way that made us all feel guilty for sins we had yet
to commit, scowling in that way that told us that one misstep by any one of us
would end the recess chances for all of us.  Fourth grade was not fun.

For one thirty-minute period each day I escaped the
oppression of Mrs. Harris’ classroom to attend a separate reading class with
older students and a different teacher. 
I don’t remember the teacher’s name; in fact, I don’t remember anything
about the teacher or the other students. Since  the other students were older, I suspect I was
in an accelerated class, but since I grew up in the dark ages when teachers were
more concerned with curtailing pride than building self-esteem, I was never
told the class was accelerated, and for all I know I may have been surrounded
by juvenile delinquents. We just accepted what we were told in those days.

To be perfectly honest, I can only remember one day in the
class, one day that left an indelible mark in my memory: the day I left my
homework at home.  As the teacher marched
up and down the aisles collecting homework assignments from each student, I
held my reading book upside down and shook it in hopes that my misplaced paper
might drop out.  Nothing!  Tears welled in my eyes when I told my teacher,
a teacher whose name I don’t even remember, that I had left it at home. Her
reply was simple: “Detention after school tomorrow.”  Along with a few other miscreants, the
following day I spent 30 minutes in silence sitting in a desk in my reading
classroom after school. At the end of detention, the teacher told us that we
would return to that same classroom for detention every time we neglected to submit
our homework.

I remember feeling humiliated. I remember feeling ashamed,
and I remember trying my hardest to keep from crying both in class the day I
couldn’t find my homework and the following day in detention. Shame!  Now that’s a word we don’t hear much anymore.
I was ashamed, truly ashamed because I had completed my homework, and I should
have had it in my notebook, but probably in my rush to run outside and play
after finishing my homework, I had pushed it aside and forgotten it.

Shame.

Today many people would find fault with the teacher and her
lack of compassion. They would analyze each of her actions and question why she
didn’t ask me to explain why I didn’t have my homework. They would suggest that
a caring teacher should have given me a second chance. They would chastise her
for breaking a child’s spirit. Today, no one would defend this teacher.

Shame.

 Yes, I would have
felt better if this no-name teacher had put her arms around me and comforted me
when I didn’t have my homework, but, despite my apprehension and fear, this
experience taught me to be responsible and diligent, two traits that have
served me well in the decades since I stepped outside that quiet detention
room. To the best of my knowledge, I never again neglected to complete or
submit my homework on time, not in elementary school, not in high school, and
not in college. Sometimes valuable lessons are not pleasant.

Recently, I became sick at my stomach while reading a book
about college admissions: What Colleges
Don’t Tell You: 272 Secrets for Getting Your Kid into the Top Schools by
Elizabeth Wissner-Gross. The author details specific strategies that parents
can use to increase their children’s chances for entering an Ivy League school.
She encourages parents to complete homework with their high school children and
to make it fun, to stay up late with their children to work on assignments, to “keep
track of all upcoming homework assignments, tests, quizzes, and projects – know
the deadlines and how far along your child is in preparing,” to “compliment,
affirm, and occasionally reward your child for good studying and hard work” (55).
I had to put the book down. 

What does the future hold for students who are never allowed
to make mistakes and suffer the consequences? 

My homework was my homework, not my mother’s.